Internet Research I

Also discussed in class: sousveillance / inverse surveillance studies, comparing datasets to note voids/absences

Readings:

Hine book Ch. 1 (Hine: Virtual Methods and the Sociology of Cyber-Social-Scientific Knowledge)

Hine book Ch. 2 (Joinson: Internet Behavior and the Design of Virtual Methods)

Hine book Part II Introduction pp. 109-112.

Hine book Ch. 11 (Schneider & Foot: Web Sphere Analysis)

See also:
http://september11.archive.org
http://tsunami.archive.org/

Hine book Ch. 12 (Park & Thelwall: The Network Approach to Web Hyperlink Research and its Utility for Science Communication).

Hine book Ch. 13 (Beaulieu: Sociable Hyperlinks).

Rogers, Richard. (2008). The Politics of Web Space. Unpublished manuscript. 15 pp. http://www.govcom.org/publications/full_list/rogers_politics_web_space_2008_pre.pdf

NOTE:
Some figures did not reproduce well in the Rogers manuscript above.
Here are higher-resolution versions:
Figure 1: Digital Divide Cartogram
Figure 2: Digital Divide Cartogram (Inverted)
Figure 10: Internet Governance Debates
Figure 11 (The Base of an Issue) is missing from the manuscript but it can be found on p. 16 of this other PDF

Today's Question: Identify a research question or topic of interest to you where it might be useful to apply a technique discussed in this week's readings from ch. 11, 12, 13, or the Rogers reading (e.g., link analysis, web sphere analysis, social network analysis, actor hyperlink language, etc.). Then, address the questions: If you went ahead with the project, what methodological problems or criticisms would you anticipate? Can the method be modified to address them?

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